But PDO occurred 150 years ago as well and there are reports that the Fraser alone was home to 100 million Sockeye every year. And we thought 30 million were a lot in 2010! Add to that millions of Chinook and Coho and many more millions of Pinks and Chum and multiply that by the number of great salmon rivers we had from California up to Alaska! I don't think there is any hatchery production today that can mimic that. The ocean has a huge potential. Of course, as sharphooks mentioned, natural up and down cycles always happened. Only today it cycles tight around the critical minimum survival line.
Hatchery and wild fish
- Thread starter Derby
- Start date
Here's another link to a relevant article. Here's a brief quote from that leads the article "Hatch-22: The Problem with The Pacific Salmon Resurgence - The number of salmon in the Pacific Ocean is twice what it was 50 years ago. But there is a downside to this bounty, as growing numbers of hatchery-produced salmon are flooding the Pacific and making it hard for threatened wild salmon species to find enough food to survive."
See also this collection of slides. Slide 10 is particularly interesting as it estimates that the total salmon biomass in the pacific was higher in the 1990's and early 2000's than at any time in the past 75 or so years.
That is believable since at about after WWI the commercial fishery really took off. Would be interesting to compare to times before industry scale fishing and before the big cannery times in the late 1800s. You would probably see that today's salmon numbers would be a fraction of back then's.
searun
Well-Known Member
Problem on the island isn't netting. There has been some on the Cowie, but that doesn't explain many others. How can one explain the Gold, or Englishman? Habitat degradation for sure. Seal predation....highly likely. Angling pressure...not a chance...MOE regulated those bums off VI rivers 10 years ago. BTW, there were record returns in the 80's on the island.
So, over a decade of "angler management" so we can let Mother Nature solve the problems is so far proven to be a failed experiment. If we are stupid enough to follow the brilliant strategy played out on the island, we are doomed to suffer the same outcomes. Pack up your steelhead gear and sell it while there is still some residual value.
If we want to change what appears to be functional extirpation then we must adopt a fully diversified strategy abandoning the foolhardy singular focus often employed in the past IMO.
Cuba Libre
Well-Known Member
agreed.. but finding the money and changing the mindset of those who have been bucking these ideas for decades is not going to be an easy task. I know that in my lifetime I have seen the best of it when it comes to steelhead , Damn shame really................
the notion that the pacific may have a carrying capacity is an interesting one indeed. no doubt there are cycles with the pacific. no doubt mankind has contributed to upsetting those cycles as well. but with a singular focus on pumping out more hatchery smolt, perhaps we have all walked right past the obvious, now much can the pacific absorb and continue functioning. perhaps we are seeing the consequences of air pollution and the use of the pacific as the big sewer for mankind reflected in the survival of our anadramous fishes. certainly we can all point out dozens of impacts to our drainages and carry on conversations regarding just how awful each one is, but what about that big pacific. what if this discussion has hit upon a really critical element in all of this. what if the pacific is now failing?
There are a few things I could think of that could have decreased the Pacific's capacity since the good old days: the overfishing of food-fish like herring. We all know that one major factor for the Georgia Strait's salmon stock decline is the depletion of once very abundant herring stocks. I doubt there is any robust science on herrings in the total Pacific. Who knows if they currently run at only 10% or what. That would certainly lower the capacity of the Pacific as a host for salmon. You probably heard about this ocean fertilization program off QCI - these scientists insist that lack of food is the issue and they are trying to address this by their actions. So people do think about this theory but I think there is little data and knowledge to support/oppose it at this point in time.
GLG
Well-Known Member
Lot's of questions about what is going on.
Ran into this today and saw that others are on the case also.
Push for change... right at the back pocket.
http://www.watershed-watch.org/AlaskaSalmonBackgrounder.pdf
Link to where the PDF came from
http://www.watershed-watch.org/medi...ight-to-alaskan-harvest-of-endangered-salmon/
Ran into this today and saw that others are on the case also.
Push for change... right at the back pocket.
http://www.watershed-watch.org/AlaskaSalmonBackgrounder.pdf
Link to where the PDF came from
http://www.watershed-watch.org/medi...ight-to-alaskan-harvest-of-endangered-salmon/
Last edited by a moderator:
searun
Well-Known Member
Thanks for posting those links. Craig Orr is highly respected, and his alert published in the Watershed Watch backgrounder is excellent. That is precisely the putting all your eggs into one basket approach that is so utterly dangerous. I agree CL, we can only hope that more effective and coordinated lobby efforts can help point govt in the right direction. I have more confidence in DFO than our friends in the province. We need to stop wasting cash on running around counting steelhead and put more into a truly diversified game plan.
dance a jig
Active Member
Lance Fisher, one of the guys responsible for this video is interviewed on this podcast http://www.theoutdoorline.com/podcasts/ More good stuff. DAJ
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